BHUBANESWAR: With organisational elections in the State BJP in full swing, the party has decided to complete the process by first week of January by electing a new president.
After formation of booth and panchayat level committees, the party is in the process of conducting polls to mandal (block) committees. In order to widen the organisational base at the secondary level, the party has restructured the mandals and increased the number of mandals from 451 to 997.
“Each of 851 zilla parishad zones is now a mandal and election to these mandal committees will be held for the first time,” said national BJP general secretary and in-charge of Odisha Arun Singh. Singh, who is camping here from Thursday, said the party has initiated a consultation process with panchayat, block and district functionaries as well as MLAs, former MLAs and MPs and those who had fought last elections on party ticket to reach a consensus for selection of leaders to the block committees.
“We are organising an open house discussion where every invited leaders of the districts are free to give their opinion on election of leaders to the respective block committee. The objective is to ensure that best of the party workers are chosen for organisational works,” Singh said. The process of district-wise consultation has started from Friday and it will be completed on Sunday. National joint general secretary (organisation) Saudan Singh has been deputed by the central leadership as observer.
As the membership of the party in the State has reached an outstanding figure of 32 lakh, the party has decided to engage as many members in organisational works to strengthen its base and stay in touch with the people.
After organisational polls are over, Singh said the party will organise agitational programmes against the State Government’s failure to solve the local issues like faulty selection of beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), lack of safe drinking water, poor electricity supply and farmers’ problems.
“Every three months, we will have such programmes at district level and every six months, there will be State level programme to keep the Governments on its toe,” the senior BJP leader said.
Singh said efforts are being made to complete the mandal election by December 20 and district presidents will be elected by end of this year.